From the application of labor conscription to the wealthy, Soviet power must transition—or rather, simultaneously must place on the agenda the task of applying corresponding principles to the majority of toilers, workers and peasants. Here the task of introducing labor conscription presents itself in a different aspect. This task must be approached differently, and we must not place in the forefront that which must be accomplished with respect to the wealthy classes. For us, it does not present an absolute necessity to register all representatives of the toiling people, to keep track of their monetary reserves or their consumption, because all the conditions of life condemn the vast majority of these strata of the population to the necessity of labor and to the impossibility of accumulating any reserves whatsoever, except the barest minimum. Therefore, the task of establishing labor conscription in this sphere is transformed into a task of establishing labor discipline and self-discipline.

In old capitalist society, discipline over the toilers was exercised by capital through the constant threat of hunger. And since this threat of starvation was coupled with inordinately heavy labor and with the consciousness of the toilers that they worked not for themselves but for another's benefit, the conditions of labor transformed into a constant struggle of the vast majority of toilers against the directors of production. On this soil it was inevitable that a psychology would develop wherein the public opinion of the toilers not only did not persecute poor work or shirking from work, but on the contrary saw in this an inevitable and legitimate protest or means of resistance against the inordinate demands of the exploiter. If now the bourgeois press and its lackeys cry out so much about anarchy among the workers, about their dissolute behavior or about their inordinate demands—then the malicious character of this criticism is far too obvious to warrant dwelling upon it at length. It is understandable that in a country in which the majority of the population has gone hungry and suffered to such an unprecedented degree, as the population of Russia has over the last three years—it is understandable that an entire series of cases of complete collapse of morale and complete collapse of any organization were absolutely inevitable. To demand in this regard a swift transition or to hope that changes in this respect could be achieved through several decrees would be as absurd as attempting through appeals to impart courage of spirit and working capacity to a man beaten half to death. Only Soviet power, created by the toilers themselves and taking account of the growing recovery among the toiling masses, will be in a position to carry through fundamental changes in this respect.

Among representatives of Soviet power and among its supporters—for example, among the leading directors of trade unions—there has already matured a necessity for working out systematic measures to raise the self-discipline of the toilers. There is no doubt that in the setting of capitalist society in general, and even more in the setting of that wild and unbridled speculation created by war, such demoralization has penetrated the working class as cannot help but be seriously combated. All the more so because, owing to the war, the composition of the advanced detachments of the working class has changed far from for the better. Therefore, the creation of discipline among the toilers, the organization of control over the measure of labor, over the intensity of labor, the introduction of special industrial courts for establishing the measure of labor, for bringing to responsibility every malicious violator of this measure, for systematic influence on the majority with the aim of raising this measure—all this is now placed on the agenda as the most urgent task of Soviet power.

We must, so far as possible, keep in mind that in bourgeois society one of the chief instruments of public education—namely, the press—has not at all fulfilled its task in the sphere under consideration. And even now our Soviet press is still largely under the impression of old habits and old traditions of bourgeois society. This manifests itself, among other things, in the fact that our press continues to devote, like the old bourgeois press, an inordinate amount of space and attention to those trivia of politics, those personal questions of political leadership with which capitalists of all countries sought to divert the attention of the popular masses from the truly serious, profound, and fundamental questions of their life. And in this respect we still face the task of solving, almost anew, that for the solution of which all material prerequisites exist—only lacking is consciousness of the necessity of this task and readiness to solve it. This task is precisely—to transform the press from an organ predominantly reporting the day's political news into a serious instrument of economic education of the masses of the population. We must achieve, and we shall achieve, that the press serving the Soviet masses will devote less space to questions about the personal composition of political leadership or about nine-tiered political measures constituting the everyday activity, the routine work of all political institutions. In the foreground the press must place questions of labor in their immediate practical formulation. The press must become the organ of the labor commune in the sense of making public precisely that which the directors of capitalist enterprises sought to hide from the masses. For the capitalist, the internal organization of his enterprise represented something protected as a commercial secret from the eyes of outside parties—something in which, it seemed, they wished to be all-powerful and sole-powerful, protected not only from criticism, not only from outside interference, but even from outside eyes. On the contrary, for Soviet power precisely the organization of labor in individual largest enterprises and in individual rural communes is the most important, fundamental, and most urgent question of all social life. Our first and chief means for raising the self-discipline of the toilers and for transition from the old, worthless methods of work or methods of shirking from work in capitalist society—the chief means must be the press, uncovering the deficiencies in the economic life of each labor commune, ruthlessly stigmatizing these deficiencies, openly revealing all the sores of our economic life and, thus, appealing to the public opinion of the toilers for the cure of these sores. Let us have ten times less newspaper material (perhaps it would be good if we had a hundred times less), newspaper material devoted to so-called pressing issues of the day—but let us have a press spread in hundreds of thousands and millions of copies, acquainting the entire population with exemplary organization in the few advanced labor communes of the state. Each factory, each cooperative and agricultural enterprise, each village transitioning to new agriculture with the application of the law on socialization of land, is now, in the sense of the democratic foundations of Soviet power, an autonomous commune with its own internal organization of labor. In each of these communes, the raising of self-discipline among the toilers, their ability to work together with specialist directors, even if from the bourgeois intelligentsia, the achievement by them of practical results in the sense of raising labor productivity, economizing human labor, preserving products from that unprecedented plunder from which we are suffering inordinately at the present time—here is what must constitute the content of the greater part of our Soviet press material. Here is the path by which we can and must achieve that the force of example becomes first and foremost a moral, and subsequently—a compulsory enforced model of the organization of labor in the new Soviet Russia.

Under capitalist society there were repeatedly examples of the organization of labor communes on the part of people who hoped peacefully and painlessly to convince humanity of the advantages of socialism and to ensure its introduction. On the part of revolutionary Marxists such a point of view and such methods of activity provoke entirely legitimate ridicule, because in the setting of capitalist slavery it would be truly completely futile dreaming to achieve any fundamental changes through isolated examples, in practice leading either to lifeless enterprises or to the transformation of these enterprises into unions of petty capitalists.

This habit of regarding with ridicule and disdain the significance of example in the mass people's economy manifests itself sometimes even now among people who have not thought through the fundamental change that has occurred since the conquest of political power by the proletariat. Now, when land has ceased to be private property, when factories and plants have almost ceased to be private property and will, undoubtedly, cease to be such in the very nearest future—(to introduce the corresponding decrees—this presents absolutely no difficulty whatsoever for Soviet power in its present position)—now the significance of the example of a labor commune, resolving better than any other means the organizational tasks, has acquired gigantic importance. We must precisely now take care that the mass of extraordinarily valuable material that exists in the form of experience of new organization of production in individual cities, in individual enterprises, in individual rural communes—that this experience becomes the possession of the masses.

We still find ourselves under considerable pressure from the old public opinion of the bourgeoisie. If one looks at our newspapers, one can easily convince oneself of how inordinately large a place we still devote to questions raised by the bourgeoisie—questions by which it wishes to divert the attention of the toilers from the concrete practical tasks of socialist reconstruction. We must transform—and we shall transform—the press from an organ of sensations, from a mere apparatus for reporting political news, from an organ of struggle against bourgeois lies—into an instrument of economic reeducation of the masses, into an instrument of acquainting the masses with how labor must be organized anew. Enterprises or rural communes that do not yield to any appeals and demands regarding the restoration of self-discipline and the raising of labor productivity will be placed on the black list by socialist parties and will either be transferred to the category of sick enterprises, regarding which it is necessary to take measures for their recovery through special adaptations—special steps and regulations—or will be transferred to the category of penalized enterprises, which are subject to closure and whose participants must be handed over to the people's court. The introduction of publicity in this sphere, in itself, will already be a tremendous reform and will serve to attract broad popular masses to independent participation in solving these questions, which affect the masses most of all. Up to now so little has been accomplished in this respect precisely because that which has been kept concealed from the public in individual enterprises, in individual communes remains as before a secret, which was understandable under capitalism and which is completely absurd and senseless in a society wishing to realize socialism. The force of example, which could not manifest itself in capitalist society, will acquire tremendous significance in a society that has abolished private property in land and in factories—not only because here they may follow a good example, but also because the better example of organization of production will be accompanied by the inevitable alleviation of labor and an increase in the sum of consumption for those who have put into effect this better organization. And here, in connection with the question of the significance of the press as an instrument of economic reorganization and reeducation of the masses, we must also touch upon the question of the significance of the press in organizing competition.

The organization of competition must occupy a prominent place among the tasks of Soviet power in the economic sphere. Bourgeois economists have more than once come forward in their criticism of socialism with the assertion that socialists deny the significance of competition or do not give it a place in their system, or, as they expressed it, in their plan of social organization. It goes without saying how absurd this accusation is, repeatedly refuted in socialist publications already. Bourgeois economists confused, as always, the question of the peculiarities of capitalist society with the question of another form of organization of competition. Attacks by socialists were never directed at competition as such, but only at competition itself. Competition, however, is a particular form of rivalry characteristic of capitalist society and consisting in the struggle of individual producers for a livelihood and for influence, for a place on the market. The abolition of competition as a struggle connected only with the market of producers in no way means the abolition of rivalry—on the contrary, precisely the abolition of commodity production and capitalism will open the door to the possibility of organizing competition in its not bestial, but in human forms. Precisely at the present time in Russia, given the foundations of political power created by the Soviet republic, given the economic properties that characterize Russia with its immense expanse and gigantic diversity of conditions—precisely now, for us, the organization of competition on socialist foundations must represent one of the most important and most rewarding tasks of the reorganization of society.

We stand for democratic centralism. And one must clearly understand how far democratic centralism differs, on the one hand, from bureaucratic centralism and, on the other hand, from anarchism. Opponents of centralism constantly put forward autonomy and federation as means of struggle against the accidents of centralism. In reality, democratic centralism in no way excludes autonomy; on the contrary—it presupposes its necessity. In reality, even federation, if it is conducted within reasonable limits from an economic standpoint, if it is based on serious national differences that evoke a genuine necessity for a certain state separateness—even federation in no way contradicts democratic centralism. Time and again federation, under a truly democratic structure, and all the more so under Soviet organization of state structure, is merely a transitional step toward genuinely democratic centralism. On the example of the Russian Soviet republic we are shown particularly clearly precisely that now the federation that we are introducing and that we shall introduce will serve as the truest step toward the most solid unification of the various nationalities of Russia into a single democratic centralized Soviet state.

And thus, just as democratic centralism in no way excludes autonomy and federation, so it in no way excludes, but on the contrary presupposes the fullest freedom of different localities and even of different communes of the state in working out diverse forms of state, social, and economic life. There is nothing more mistaken than confusing democratic centralism with bureaucratism and with stereotyping. Our task now is to carry through precisely democratic centralism in the sphere of economy, to ensure absolute coherence and unity in the functioning of such economic enterprises as railways, post, telegraph and other means of transport, etc., and at the same time centralism, understood in a genuinely democratic sense, presupposes, for the first time in history, the created possibility of full and unimpeded development not only of local particularities but also of local initiative, local enterprise, diversity of paths, methods, and means of movement toward a common goal. Therefore, the task of organizing competition consists of two aspects: on the one hand, it requires the carrying through of democratic centralism as depicted above; on the other hand—it means the possibility of finding the most correct, most economical path to the reorganization of Russia's economic structure. Speaking generally, this path is known. It consists in the transition to large-scale economy built on machine industry, in the transition to socialism. But the concrete conditions and forms of this transition are inevitably and must be diverse depending on those conditions under which the movement directed toward the creation of socialism begins. And local differences, and peculiarities of economic structure, and the forms of everyday life, and the degree of preparedness of the population, and attempts to carry out one plan or another—all this must be reflected in the peculiarity of the path to socialism in one or another labor commune of the state. The greater such diversity—of course, if it does not turn into affectation—the more surely and the more swiftly will be ensured both our achievement of democratic centralism and the realization of socialist economy. What remains for us now is simply to organize competition, i.e., to ensure publicity that would give the possibility to all communes of the state to familiarize themselves with how, exactly, economic development has proceeded in different localities—to ensure, secondly, the comparability of results of movement toward socialism in one and another commune of the state—to ensure, thirdly, the possibility of practical repetition of the experience carried out in one commune by other communes—to ensure the possibility of exchange of those material forces—and human forces—which have shown themselves from the best side in the corresponding sphere of people's economy or state administration. Crushed by the capitalist system, we cannot even imagine precisely at the present time what rich forces lie hidden in the mass of toilers, in the diversity of labor communes of a great state, in the intellectual forces that have hitherto worked as dead voiceless executors of capitalist prescriptions, what forces lie hidden and can develop under the socialist organization of society. Our task consists only in clearing the way for all these forces. And if we place the organization of competition as our state task—then, on the condition of carrying through Soviet principles of state order, on the condition of abolishing private property in land, in factories, in plants, etc.—the results must inevitably show themselves and will instruct us in the further forms of construction.